Loose Cattle -- Someone's Monster
Loose Cattle bring New Orleans' wild party and haunting gothic to country music on their stunning new album Someone's Monster.
You might not associate country music with New Orleans, but Loose Cattle is part of the Crescent City's bubbling scene. After all, New Orleans is the crossroads of all the cultures have built this nation, and it stands to reason that country gets transformed into something bigger and more robust here. With Someone's Monster, Loose Cattle uses the most American of art forms to interrogate our uniquely American evils. Someone's Monster investigates how we become monsters – whether those othered by the "majority," or how the "majority" turns into oppressors.
(As a brief note for transparency – singers Michael Cerveris and Kimberly Kaye have generously supported Rainbow Rodeo in previous fundraisers but it's obvious that Someone's Monster stands strong on its own merits.)
Kaye digs deep with her performances, especially on the ominous "Cheneyville" and "Here's That Attention You Ordered." Both songs paint everyday decisions in mythic proportions: the strife that triggers the hero's journey, and the demons encountered therein. "Cheyville" centers the desire to leave a narrow-minded community, and despairing if that escape can ever be made. "Attention," meanwhile, explores why someone might want to believe, illustrating the patriarchal authority and violence that strikes at the heart of oppression in the home and beyond. Cerveris' rumble on "God's Teeth" makes this sequence of three songs required listening – you'll have to stop whatever else you're doing.
But there's also defiance – there may be pain, but there is also struggle. "Before We Begin" celebrates the everyday people who keep the trains running (literally) in our society – and the ways they are discarded as soon as they can no longer sacrifice their physical well-being. "Not Over Yet" encourages us to resist with our bodies and our joy – the things that cannot be taken away from us no matter how hard they try.
Someone's Monster features some impressive guests – Patterson Hood and Lucinda Williams – but it's the homegrown talent that sets this album apart. Alex McMurray's guitars add fuel to the fire – not with hotshot licks per se, but with just the right notes to give the song some extra punch. Backup singers Debbie Davis, Arséne Delay and Meschiya Lake (who all have catalogues worth exploring) provide an extra richness to the songs. Perhaps it's only in New Orleans that the terrifying implications of fascism and American gothic tales can sit side by side with a song like "Not Over Yet," whose main message is, after all, laissez les bontemps rouler.
